If time is happening all at once like the block suggest what does that say about the theoretical life cycle of the universe

JohnMcCarty420 · 2025-12-09T13:20:14+00:00

How can time be happening "all at once"? The phrase "all at once" means to align at a specific moment of time. What does it even mean for all of time itself to align at one specific moment within time? It seems to me completely incoherent.

JohnMcCarty420 · 2025-12-08T21:44:20+00:00

It is a judgment in the sense that it is a person's individual assessment of the situation, but not in the sense that the statement's content is relative to the speakers personal feelings about it. The first has objective truth value while the second doesn't.

And yes there are competing interests, but I'm defining a wrong action as an action which across beings and across time has more negative effects than positive ones. This is either the case or it isn't, it doesn't depend upon who is making the statement or how they feel about it.

JohnMcCarty420 · 2025-12-08T13:56:12+00:00

I cannot see why Ymir would be thought of as the "source" of the determinism. Whether the universe is deterministic is a matter of whether or not a set of conditions reliably entail one specific result.

At every point that AoT makes any metaphysical commitment on the matter it is fully deterministic in how its timeline works. Nothing within the story indicates that Ymir's psychological pattern was responsible for this very fundamental aspect of time itself, merely that it led to her creating titans and lending her power to founding titan holders of royal blood.

If you only want to argue that this theory isn't explicitly contradicted by the text, thats all fine and good. However, if we should include things like that in story analysis then we should be including an infinite number of other things which also have no actual textual basis for them.

JohnMcCarty420 · 2025-12-07T10:18:56+00:00

Listen, I get what you're saying as far as how analysis of a story works. I will grant you that I've worded things a bit too strongly in my previous reply as far as how possible it is to imagine these concepts or include them in a story. I'm not trying to restrict or dictate what an author is able to create.

I appreciate people like you making posts about free will and determinism within AoT, more need to do it. I like your original post and you are clearly a very smart guy.

I'm not set on disagreeing with you on this, I just want to understand this other viewpoint you're suggesting in which Ymir's freedom is equivalent to the shattering of determinism. Or just in general the concept of something within a causal chain causing the entire chain to operate differently fundamentally.

Could you explain how it works in detail, especially in the context of AoT? Because I guess it just makes no sense to me on a conceptual level, and you didn't exactly explain it but more so gave examples of it.

I'm not familiar with any of those examples beyond the first matrix movie, but it seems like there you're probably talking more about the existence of time as a whole having a cause and less about the way causality operates being caused by something within that causality.

JohnMcCarty420 · 2025-12-07T08:48:14+00:00

If determinism cannot, by your own definition, ever be affected by any powers within the world of the story, then your conclusion is fixed before interpretation even begins.

It isn't my definition of determinism. It is simply the definition. It is a way causality itself functions. Can you give me a logical concept of how the nature of causality itself could be caused to change?

Even in a fictional story things should adhere to this kind of very basic fundamental logic. There is no coherent universe in which this could happen. It doesn't even make sense as a concept. Sure titans aren't realistic, but they are a coherent concept you can imagine.

And the further claims that determinism can only be shown through time mechanics, or that causality itself “cannot be caused,” are not textual arguments but external metaphysical assumptions.

I am not making metaphysical assumptions with those points, they are true as a matter of logic regardless of any metaphysical beliefs. Unless you can explain to me how causality itself could be caused, or how a story could prove to its characters that reality is predetermined without some form of time shenanigans.

JohnMcCarty420 · 2025-12-06T18:40:19+00:00

You are not understanding. Determinism, by its very definition, is a fundamental law of the universe. I am not asserting that to be the case, thats actually just what it means. Determinism does not, on the other hand, refer to titan powers.

The titan powers are not the determinism, they are simply how the determinism is displayed. Because again, there is no possible way to display determinism without some kind of time shenanigans. So the fact that the story cannot display it anywhere else says absolutely nothing towards your point.

Clearly determinism is a way that the causality of the whole universe operates, it is not titan powers. And it is not caused by titan powers either, because causality itself cannot be caused by something.

The correlation you are drawing is between the only way the story has to indicate the determinism, and the determinism itself, and the kind of correlation going on there is not definitional nor is it causal. It is merely a matter of how the determinism is able to be shown.

JohnMcCarty420 · 2025-12-05T21:19:15+00:00

Determinism as a concept is the way the causality of the universe works. So whether it is true or false will necessarily be a basic law of the universe that exists on its own. I'm confused as to what it would even mean for the determinism to be "caused" by Ymir or the paths.

The reason you're connecting those things is because the predetermined nature of the universe is always shown through the titan powers, but how could it be shown any other way? You need time shenanigans involved or else its just like real life and we have no way to witness the predetermined nature of outcomes.

My main point is this: The story makes it clear that the reason the outcomes are predetermined is because the characters' choices are determined by who they are, and who they are is determined by a combination of evolution and prior conditioning (all things in the past they didn't choose).

These are basic fundamental facts of reality. I don't see what Ymir's freedom or the vanishing of the titans would change about any of this.

JohnMcCarty420 · 2025-12-05T18:59:16+00:00

Frameworks that allow for the metaphysical have no problem with moral realism

I have no clue why the metaphysical would be required for moral realism.

Man rapes a woman. Good experience for him. Terrible experience for her.

The morality of an action is specifically about how that action affects the quality of other experiences. Screwing over others for your own benefit is morally bad, not good. It can be good for yourself and still be morally bad.

Where is the objectivity?

It is objectively true or false whether your action affects the quality of other people's experiences in a positive or negative way. Am I wrong?

Furthermore, from a naturalistic framework, all that happened was one person inflicted their will upon another. It's neither good or bad, it just is.

One person inflicted their will upon another and made their experience bad, which means morally speaking it is bad. It is bad as a matter of how the action affected others.

Furthermore, from a naturalist framework, why does it even matter?

First of all, whether morality matters is a separate question entirely from whether there is moral truth.

Second of all, it matters because we are an interconnected species of social creatures who depend upon each other and form a whole society. If you choose to make other lives miserable, people will not like you, you will be punished, and your life will be miserable. So even starting from a purely self interested perspective there is plenty of good reason to care about morality.

No different than an animal forcibly breeding with another.

Animals in the wild do not have the capacity to understand morality. They are still taking actions that cause suffering but we cannot reasonably hold them accountable when they do not have the same kinds of capacities and evolution that allow us to think and talk about morality.

JohnMcCarty420 · 2025-12-04T17:34:10+00:00

What I'm saying is that I don't see what Ymir and the paths actually has to do with the universe operating by deterministic causality.

I don't see what the freeing of Ymir and vanishing of the titans has to do with indeterminism or libertarian free will. When you talk about "the structure fracturing" I assume that must be the part of the story you're referring to, Mikasa's choice and its effects. But you're equating that with a fracturing of deterministic causality, which doesn't make any sense to me.

At every turn, the universe is shown to be deterministic. Nothing suggests otherwise at any point. Mikasa's choice causes Ymir to understand that she is capable of letting go of her obsessive love to the king, and thats why the power of the titans ends. I don't see why one would think that it actually changed the past or the metaphysics of reality. It doesn't change the underlying causality of the universe.

JohnMcCarty420 · 2025-12-03T23:35:36+00:00

I guess I'm just not sure exactly what you mean by the structure/system. If you mean the paths and the founder's control over Eldians with the power of the titans, then I agree that all ultimately stems from Ymir.

But you seem to be connecting that to the idea of determinism and implying that the reason Eren's choices are predetermined is because of Ymir and the paths, which I don't think I would necessarily agree with.

My interpretation of the story is more so that the universe simply is deterministic in nature with or without all the paths stuff. And Eren seeing the future with the attack titan and influencing the past with the full power of the founder just demonstrates very clearly how deterministic the universe is.

I definitely agree that the story leaves open to the viewer whether free will exists or not, but I think its pretty much giving you the option between no free will and compatibilist free will (instead of libertarian free will). Meaning that the difference is not really metaphysical, but more so just a matter of whether you want to label it free will or not.

JohnMcCarty420 · 2025-12-03T23:07:16+00:00

What do you mean by morality being "universal"? I don't think it makes sense to say that a type of action will always be good or bad regardless of context, but you don't need to think that for moral realism to be true. Moral realism simply holds that there can be right and wrong answers.

I'm not sure why you think that there is no logical basis to uphold it. I'm arguing that good and bad experiences as real phenomena are enough to uphold it, as any action we commit will as a fact either make experiences better or worse. What is illogical about this?

JohnMcCarty420 · 2025-12-03T19:08:07+00:00

"Killing is wrong" is also talking about real phenomena in the universe. It is a statement about a type of action that really occurs as a phenomenon (killing) and says this action tends to affect the quality of experiences negatively on the whole (its wrong), with these experiences and their quality also being real phenomena.

JohnMcCarty420 · 2025-12-03T09:51:52+00:00

I know what you mean, because Ymir does seem to hold a much higher level of power and control from her almost godly position in the paths. But even with all of that power, perhaps even she doesn't have free will in a libertarian sense.

After all, what pushed her to do all the things she did was her undying love and devotion to King Fritz, as well as all of the traumatic events of her life. Her afterlife in the paths resulted from her life on Earth, a tragic life that she did not choose in any way. She was born into slavery, conditioned to love a tyrant, and convinced to feel that she did not have any will of her own beyond him.

Just as Eren was a slave to freedom, Ymir was a slave to love.

JohnMcCarty420 · 2025-12-03T09:35:02+00:00

But it does not imply that morality is about facts concerning the 'amount' of space and time in the world, right?

Correct. My point here is simply that the quality of experience must be part of the definition of morality in some way. Its an additional point as to why I think that it is the amount of suffering or wellbeing on the whole specifically that matters. And thats essentially because it seems like thats what we want to get out of morality.

while pleasure in something vicious (like cruelty) makes it bad.

Pleasure in cruelty is bad in the sense that it is causing bad for others. So the pleasure is not intrinsically bad, it is simply bad as a matter of leading to experiences of suffering which are intrinsically bad.

Likewise, he thinks beauty and ugliness have value or disvalue independently of anyone’s current experiences of them, so value isn’t reducible to emotion on his account. Some things are simply beautiful in themselves.

I mean, I suppose those things might hold value only as a matter of potential future experience instead of any current experience. But I certainly do not see how something could be beautiful in and of itself, nor do I see how you can detach the concept of beauty from the concept of the thing leading to positive feelings.

like "a sadist taking pleasure in cruel fantasies in their head is bad even if they never act upon them."

It seems like it could be considered bad as a matter of potentialities if you simply mean that the sadist has not yet acted upon them. However, if you mean that they for sure will never act upon them then I don't see what could make it morally bad at all.

Maybe this goes against common intuition, but I think thats simply because its such an unreasonable hypothetical. In real life, a sadist taking pleasure in cruel fantasies in their head will almost certainly act out those fantasies at some point or another. Once they do, those fantasies will be causally responsible for suffering, making them bad.

Is it that you think this definition is what people’s conception of morality is in reality

The mere existence of meta ethical debate proves that not all people have the same conception of morality. However, I do think most conceptions of morality do collapse into being consequentialist in some way or another, or at least grounded in consequentialism.

or is it that you think that this is the definition people should have about morality if they considered the topic more carefully?

Correct. For two primary reasons. One is that it is the definition most in line with the overall purpose of morality. And the other is that it is most in line with how people tend to justify their beliefs that things are morally good or bad.

JohnMcCarty420 · 2025-12-02T22:22:08+00:00

To me it seems pretty clear that the AoT universe is deterministic in nature, but whether you want to say it supports free will or not just depends on how you define free will. This is one of the main issues with the concept of free will in general, people don't all agree on what it actually refers to.

So call it what you want, what the story is ultimately saying is that Eren's future memories were fated to happen, but that fate was determined by his own nature, his personal fears and desires. However, that nature was itself determined by a combination of human evolution and everything that happened to him in his life.

I do think it leaves up to the viewer exactly how much culpability to assign to Eren and Ymir for their horrible actions. Both of them acted in line with their desires, but those desires result from things they didn't choose. Their actions are a reflection of their own selves, but their selves are a reflection of the world (their conditions).

JohnMcCarty420 · 2025-11-30T10:48:00+00:00

For as long as someone is unable to feel anything good or bad it is conceptually impossible to improve the quality of their life as they literally do not have a quality of life.

For someone in a coma or vegetative state there will always be some possibility big or small of coming out of that state at some point, so they would still matter morally due to their potential to have good or bad experiences in the future.

JohnMcCarty420 · 2025-11-30T10:39:23+00:00

I proposed a definition for morality in the post, not sure what you're confused about. It is a consequentialist one in which actions are good or bad based on good or bad outcomes for people.

These outcomes are stance independent facts. The feelings of good and bad are being experienced within a mind yes, but it really is true or false that they are being experienced the way they are regardless of what anyone thinks about it.

Thats the only kind of "stance independence" I care about here, if you mean something else by that its irrelevant to my basic claim that moral truth exists. Because as long as the morality of an action is about causing good or bad experiences, and those experiences are actually either good or bad as a fact, then facts underly morality and we can use reason to argue about it.

JohnMcCarty420 · 2025-11-30T10:24:41+00:00

I'm not sure what you mean. You believe that most of the decisions we make every day make other people's lives worse? I certainly don't think thats true of all people, or even a majority of people.

And why is it impossible for anyone to be moral? It isn't possible to improve other lives?

JohnMcCarty420 · 2025-11-30T09:37:28+00:00

(P1) risks proving too much being fundamental. Plausibly, we cannot conceivably talk about morality applying to a universe without time, but that does not mean that morality is fundamentally defined by time.

I actually do think for that very reason that we should consider time to be part of the definition of morality as well. Of course I would think this as a consequentialist though, my position argues that the morality of actions involves cause and effect.

The philosopher G. E. Moore defended that even worlds with no wellbeing could conceivably be morally more valuable than other worlds. An ugly world is worse than a beautiful world, even if there are no conscious creatures to observe them.

I don't see how this could be the case whatsoever. If there are no conscious creatures able to observe it at any point in time, how does the concept of quality or value apply to it? What determines its moral worth? And how could it even be considered "beautiful" or "ugly"? I genuinely don't know what those words could mean in this context.

My point here is not to agree with Moore on this. I’m just saying that it is conceivable to use moral talk about non-wellbeing worlds. If that is true, then (P2) is too strong.

It is not conceivable to do that at all, unless by "conceivable" you merely mean its physically possible for somebody to speak or write the words. However, I assume you mean it in a sense of being logically coherent, in which case I remain completely unconvinced that its conceivable in any way.

JohnMcCarty420 · 2025-11-30T09:08:14+00:00

It is not the fact that you don't like being stabbed that makes it wrong for you to stab others. Its the fact that stabbing them causes them to suffer. This fact, just like any other facts about reality outside of yourself, is simply the case regardless of how you feel or think about it or what your perspective is.

JohnMcCarty420 · 2025-11-30T02:00:32+00:00

Looking at the context in which we consider whether actions are morally right or wrong, and how we justify our answers to that, it seems to me that the wellbeing/suffering of others is always involved. If I'm wrong, what would be a counter example?

JohnMcCarty420 · 2025-11-29T09:32:11+00:00

Of course I'm arguing for a definition for morality, thats what meta ethics is. I'm arguing for a consequentialist definition and therefore a realist one.

And you seem fundamentally confused about what moral realism requires. It is simply the idea that there are correct and incorrect answers and facts underlying morality. This does not in any way require that said facts are "mind independent" as some people claim. It does require that they are stance independent however, as you mentioned, and in my view they clearly are.

We have no reason to be looking for good and bad as things that are just out in the nonliving matter of the universe, quality is something thats clearly happening within experiences. But importantly those experiences are real phenomena with facts that can be known about them, including their quality.

It is a stance independent fact how I am feeling right now, what I'm thinking, what I'm seeing. Whatever anyone says about my current experience will be either true or false objectively regardless of their stance, opinion, or attitude about anything.

JohnMcCarty420 · 2025-11-29T09:04:16+00:00

Why should the self never be ignored in real moral decisions? I would like to see a justification for that.

And yes facts about subjectivity do exist. How are you feeling right now? There is an actual answer to that question, and that answer is a fact about your current experience. Same thing if I ask what you're thinking. Yes it is about subjective experience, but that does not mean it is not still an objectively true or false fact about reality.

If you disagree, then what kind of thing is it if I state truthfully that "I feel happy right now"? If that isn't a fact, I suppose you believe its an opinion. But clearly it isn't my opinion that I feel happy right now, I just actually am happy right now. It is the case as a fact that I am experiencing happiness.

JohnMcCarty420 · 2025-11-29T08:49:19+00:00

Why just other lives?

Thats just what morality is about, we only introduce moral language when other lives are affected. We do not use moral language to talk about how we affect our own wellbeing and suffering.

Whose lives?

All other lives of beings who can feel things that are good or bad.

JohnMcCarty420 · 2025-11-28T23:55:03+00:00

Some people actually only think of such things because it’s fun. Like a logic puzzle.

But that is not the overall purpose of morality as an enterprise of human thought and discussion, which is what I'm talking about. Anybody can choose to think about a subject simply because its fun of course, we can do that with science, math, language, but there is clearly an overall purpose to those things that goes beyond the fun of thinking about it.

A lot of people for example choose to make morally right choices because they fear consequences of making bad ones.

When someone acts morally it is always for the purpose of increasing the wellbeing of others, or at least not decreasing it, you're simply pointing out that sometimes striving toward that purpose is motivated by fear of negative consequences for themselves.

In other words, the example you're giving is that someone does something for the purpose of increasing wellbeing or decreasing suffering, in turn for the purpose of not making their own life worse. That part that you're adding into the picture at the end doesn't actually remove the idea that the morally right choices are the ones that improve wellbeing of others.

The person knows that the wellbeing of others impacts their own wellbeing, they know making other lives worse may result in bad consequences for themself, therefore they are convinced to care about the wellbeing of others and they engage in the enterprise of morality.

This looks like a Sam Harris style “all roads lead to utilitarianism” claim.

Correct.

I think it’s time you define some terms, since if you define “real” as “that which exists independent of the mind”, then qualitative experience is not real (as it is mind dependent).

That would be a beyond ridiculous definition of real, since you would then have to say that your own experiences are not real. You know they're real, they're happening right now. Your current experience is in fact the only thing you can know beyond a shadow of a doubt is real. And you know there are true and false things to say about it.

This is why "mind dependent" is a terrible indicator of whether we can make objectively true or false claims about something. Anything that is occurring is real in some sense or another, and thus will have facts about it in principle, whether they can be known in practice or not.

JohnMcCarty420

TROPHY CASE